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Original poster

to be horrified that people may know I've viewed their Facebook page?

348 replies

icouldjusteatacroissant · 12/10/2015 14:05

Facebook deny it, but there's massive talk on the net that if you look at someone's page, you pop up on their suggested list or people you may know list. Maybe not straight away, but you do appear at some point

Am I the only one who looks at their ex's or whoevers pages, photos, etc?

I am horrified they may know I've been snooping Shock

OP posts:
fanjoforthemammaries7850 · 14/10/2015 17:05

Not that people I have served would look me up either, tbh.

PacificMouse · 14/10/2015 17:33

All that is true except that I never post anything onFB apart from one close group. This is for a very specific interest of no relation whatsoever with the 'people you might like'.
There are no photos, no info about what I'm doing. Ie I'm onFB but use it read stuff not to interact with people Grin. Hell in not even sure I have a location on my profile!

There is something else going on that isn't as some as that.

LurkingOne · 14/10/2015 18:28

Booyaka - I'm pretty sure that mumsnet staff aren't hunting through facebook to verify the people they have banned.

I also presume that Mn emailed you to inform you of your banning. So their email addresses were associated with your email address. You don't have to add them as contacts, you just need to receive an email from them for facebook to then suggest them as a possible friend.

To flip the question being debated on the thread. Those of you who remain convinced that facebook are suggesting people you've been stalked by as friends, why? What do Facebook have to gain from that?

I can think why they wouldn't - generally people who facebook stalk aren't friends with the stalkee, or they would just add them as a friend. In some cases it would be seedy old men (and young) looking at teens and 20 something's. Imagine Derek aged 59 being a suggested friend to kylie, aged 20, who has no association with derek other than he perved on her low privacy profile and holiday pics. How is that going to enhance Kylies user experience of facebook??

It's not, it's going to freak out 50% of Kylies (rightly so) and they are going to leave the site.

It simply makes no sense for them to do it. or have I missed something here?

ConstanceMarkYaBitch · 14/10/2015 19:47

It simply makes no sense for them to do it. or have I missed something here?

No, you haven't. I've been saying this since the very start, but apparently people don't want to hear it!

leedy · 14/10/2015 19:54

Yes, why would FB do something that's almost certainly likely to offend users and/or cause them to look at fewer pages? Fewer page-views == less bags of cash for them.

Garrick · 14/10/2015 22:48

There is something else going on ...

Yes. My post got way too long already but I was going to add that I also had a premium subscription with 192.com, LinkedIn and loads of shopping databases, health information, Rightmove and the like. With my superhuman relational databasing powers, I'm pretty clued-up about half the people you know, if not you yourself. And I can deduce a fair amount from that.

By the way, I really can do quite a bit of ^ that but am very limited by not having any paid subscriptions or much energy. There are some folks on MN who are brilliant^ at it!

Facebook obviously does 'know' who's looked at your profile. Maybe that information upweights a person who matches you in other ways. But as PP keep saying, they would be mad to suggest friends on that basis alone.

Garrick · 14/10/2015 22:49

Sorry for the italics, I got my little hats in the wrong place

Booyaka · 14/10/2015 23:13

Nope. I didn't get an email, I emailed them and they replied from a general Mumsnet address and this was their personal profiles, they would have had to be logged in to see most of the profile. Can't have been from the general Mumsnet address, that wouldn't be associated to their personal accounts.

And yes, checking out links to a users email is one of the first things you would do if you were trying to see if a user is legit and a real person rather than a troll or pbu. One of the easiest ways to do that is by seeing if there is a 'trail' from the email on social media which shows if someone is likely to have given their real name and details.

And it wasn't just one staff member at Mumsnet, there were a few. So it wasn't just coincidence or one common name.

sunnyallthetimeeverywhere · 15/10/2015 00:12

Recently I searched for an old school friend on FB. She has a distinctive but not particularly unusual name. I clicked on one of the suggestions for people of that name but it turned out to be a young girl aged 18 who lived 200 miles away and is in the party phase of her life. Obviously not my forty-something friend. However, she is now on my people you might know list. Because I have viewed her profile, obviously.

Maybe you don't know who has been viewing your profile, but your PYMK list is definitely influence by who you view.

LurkingHusband · 15/10/2015 00:30

Facebooks entire raison d'etre is to build interconnections. There's a certain critical mass (probably with a log(n) type curve). I became aware of this years ago. As friends started joining FB (and sucked my email into their "people you may know" routine) I realised that FB was being made aware that there was a person - me - who was connected to several FBers (and thence by second degree to their friends) even though I hadn't signed up.

Eventually, it was obvious that even though I wasn't "on FB", it made fuck all difference. FB still "knew" I existed. Not only that, it knew by people who knew me (who are FBers) what sort of interests, tastes, and outlook I had.

Privacy in the internet age is a fiction. By triangulation of multiple sources, it's possible to infer an awful lot about someone, even if the only way you know of them is their relationship to people you do know about.

It's hardly a new topic for sci-fi. Why are people so surprised ?

nooka · 15/10/2015 07:11

Booyaka surely the fact that FB was suggesting several members of Mumsnet Towers makes it less rather than more likely that the link was not because someone searched you up on Facebook. Why would you imagine that a number of staff were looking at your profile? If mumnset used facebook profiles linked to email addresses (assuming that your email address is your full name as used on Facebook) as some sort of validation then only one person would need to make that check.

I do think that there is something a bit odd going on when people assume that there are many almost strangers out there checking them out on Facebook. Is this something that you do yourself? I have never used Facebook to check out random people, why would I care what inane whitterings the person who gave me say some insurance advice, or was the receptionist at my doctors or any other almost random chooses to share with their friends? Is this something that large numbers of people actually do?

noblegiraffe · 15/10/2015 07:13

And it wasn't just one staff member at Mumsnet

Why would a whole bunch of mumsnet staff be individually checking out a single nondescript poster's Facebook using their individual Facebook accounts? That makes no sense. One person checking it out, yes. But once that's done, why would anyone else look?
More likely that their personal emails are connected in some way to the MNHQ email.

nooka · 15/10/2015 07:34

Especially when they have the much easier option of using the Mumsnet facebook account.

Marynary · 15/10/2015 09:42

Marynary you will have had your friends email address in your contacts as will her DH - I bet that will be the link not that you had 'stalked' him.

I didn't "stalk" him. My friend "stalked" me using her DH's facebook account. I didn't have any e mail addresses in my contact list and I very rarely use facebook (I don't even know if I had more than a couple of friends on it at the time) so that is not how we were linked.

SurferJet · 15/10/2015 09:47

So what's the final answer? haven't RTFT.

Yes ( people know ) or,
No ( so carry on stalking! ) haha

Original poster
icouldjusteatacroissant · 15/10/2015 10:28

I'm still awaiting the final conclusion too!

I am leaning toward a no but Constance quite understandably hasn't given us a lot to go on apart from -she knows cos she's in the know - and the majority of us aren't.

OP posts:
SurferJet · 15/10/2015 10:47

I've been stalking an ex on FB for about 2 years, I've probably made his Christmas card list by now, & possibly even a named beneficiary in his will [ hopeful ]

LeaveMyWingsBehindMe · 15/10/2015 11:08

Right. Can anyone definitively say that they have found an ex or an adversary of some sort or anyone they suspect might want to snoop on their profiles, who has appeared in their People You Might Know list, and who categorically IS NOT there for some perfectly explainable other reason, such as having FB friends of friends in common, or there has been email or mobile phone communication at some point?

I don't think anyone has come up with anything yet that makes me think they might be any truth in this.

Original poster
icouldjusteatacroissant · 15/10/2015 11:33

I have just had a look leave.

My ex who I have been snooping on, is on my PYMK list. I only have 8 FB friends, no mutuals,no links whatsoever, except I have been on his profile

Where is Constance when you need her? come and explain please!

OP posts:
TennesseeMountainPointOfView · 15/10/2015 11:50

But that makes sense, Icouldjust - you've been searching him, viewing his profile, it's entirely sensible that FB suggest him to you. The problem would be if FB suggested you to him based on your searching him.

marynary - is it possible that your friend logged into your DH's facebook account on her tablet/phone etc, thereby allowing it access to her contacts, which might conceivably include you? Or possibly while she was also looking you up, she looked up other people/places/activities you had in common that you may also have looked at in the past, even if you didn't go on to add them as friends/interests etc?

LeaveMyWingsBehindMe · 15/10/2015 11:54

But icould that is because you have looked at his profile! I mean someone where you haven't looked at them and can find no reason why they might otherwise be on your PYMK list.

Original poster
icouldjusteatacroissant · 15/10/2015 12:04

ok, so if fb know I have been looking for him, then it figures that they will link us by suggesting me to him.

there are loads more peeps listed, but not a clue who they are as no mutuals.

OP posts:
TennesseeMountainPointOfView · 15/10/2015 12:11

ok, so if fb know I have been looking for him, then it figures that they will link us by suggesting me to him.

No, that would be creepy, and facebook would not suggest you to somebody solely on the grounds that you had viewed their profile because it would scare people off and facebook would therefore lose advertising revenue, which is their entire reason for existing.

Original poster
icouldjusteatacroissant · 15/10/2015 12:23

yep I get that, but there are some as yet unexplained goings on from other posters

OP posts:
Marynary · 15/10/2015 12:23

marynary - is it possible that your friend logged into your DH's facebook account on her tablet/phone etc, thereby allowing it access to her contacts, which might conceivably include you? Or possibly while she was also looking you up, she looked up other people/places/activities you had in common that you may also have looked at in the past, even if you didn't go on to add them as friends/interests etc?

I didn't know that facebook access your contacts on your phone. I'm even less happy about it. Anyway, this was before the days of smart phones/tablets.